I'm in the middle of wiring up a cable for an electrical hook up to be used while camping in France. I have a French 3-pin plug bought there on a previous visit, but in opening it up I find there's absolutely no indication which of the two power pins is live and neutral. Doesn't it matter?I will be using the cable with an RCD device; won't that object and trip out if the wiring's the wrong way round? Or is it a case of "suck it and see" when I get to France, and if it's wrong, reverse the wiring?ThanksDavid

You can get the proper adaptor from a caravan shop or Towsure, but be careful some sites in France use the same blue plug as our sites, I have 3 different adapters - two with the French plugs, one with reversed polarity and the other as normal then I also have a short lead of male and female blue plugs with the polarity reversed because 'yes' I have come across that aswell! Its also useful having a blue plug with a uk three pin socket on the end so you can plug a tester in to test for correct polarity or earth faults before using the correct adaptor to hook up.Steve.

Wiring of European plugs - live/neutral??

Aug 30, 2008 82 Replies

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KHBlue 17 years ago

Sorry 'Lobster' I didn't get back to you, I thinks there are all your answers on here already! Steve.

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GeoffC 17 years ago

Which, I would have thought, is the obvious and simple answer :-)

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Lobster 17 years ago

Thanks for all the responses. In the event the power supply was via standard UK blue sockets, all the electrics worked OK, and nobody got fried! [notwithstanding France being as wet as the UK apparently was last week :-( ]

David

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